


don't fall asleep in in the moonlight, she'll make you sweat

by hoars



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Don't Really Happen, Bruises, Except to Boyd, F/M, Grey fic, Happyish Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mates, Not Domestic Violence, Self-Harm, Training Accidents, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 02:23:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoars/pseuds/hoars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There bruises on Derek's chest from where Stiles pushed Derek. Two purple-red impressions of the heel of Stiles' palms. Derek pokes them curiously. </p>
<p>Derek's never had bruises before Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't fall asleep in in the moonlight, she'll make you sweat

**Author's Note:**

> This was the result of writing fic on my fifteen minute breaks for the past week and from my love affair with poetry. I am deeply sorry if 1) it offended anyone and 2) is extremely disjointed.

i.

There's a bruise on his cheekbone that Derek blames on the wolfsbane. He's never had a bruise before. Not one that doesn't heal near instantly. It doesn't explain why this one makes his face twinge every time he opens his mouth days later after the wolfsbane is definitely out of his system and he should be healing. The bullet wound healed in seconds after all.

ii.

Derek has bruises in the shapes of fingers on his skin. He thinks it might be the kamina venom but can only think of one common factor between this event and the last. The bruises hurt and throb, reminding him of the hours spent in chlorine. He stares at them when he takes of his damp shirt at "home" and stares at the purple against the stark of his skin. The bruise on his cheek had been faint. Too light to see unless someone was deliberately searching for it. These bruises he could see and he wondered at them.

iii.

"Erica, spar with Isaac. Boyd, with me."

They don't know why he keeps them desperate. Why he always has them fighting someone else and never each other.

Derek, he has growing suspicions now. Things half remembered from his childhood. Nothing he can put in words, not yet but he remembers his parents and the care they always afforded each other despite having the ability to heal near instantaneously.

iv.

"Why isn't he healing?". Erica asks, frantic and beautiful with tears streaking her face.

He can smell her guilt like his own. "I told you not to spar with him." Derek says.

"We have to get him to Dr. Deaton!" Scott says loudly.

v.

Deaton puts Derek's instincts into words. "Only mates can hurt each other like this. A reminder not to."

Erica is venom. "Why didn't you tell me? Us?"

Deaton answers for Derek. "He probably didn't know. He was born a werewolf. He has always had instincts to follow. I would be surprised if Derek ever questioned them."

vi.

There bruises on Derek's chest from where Stiles pushed Derek. Two purple-red impressions of the heel of Stiles' palms. Derek pokes them curiously.

vii.

Derek's never had bruises before Stiles.

He presses his fingers into them hard, wanting to feel the spike of pain he's never felt for longer than eight minutes.

It aches. It's dull. it's muted.

He finds that he likes watching them change colors.

Purple, red, yellow, black, green.

viii.

The smell of bursted blood vessels raised in the skin makes Derek smell differently.

Maybe not different enough if his pack and Scott can't suss out the subtle difference. If they could, they'd know.

They'd know more about Derek than he would want them to.

(Everything.)

ix.

If the Argents or any other hunters for that matter ever found out a human boy exists who can hurt him and make the damage stick, he thinks they would poison Stiles against Derek. Make  _him_  one of them.

Not out of outright malice but because they are curious about werewolves and their mates.

So is Derek.

He doesn't know what to do, so he does nothing.

x.

Derek can hurt Stiles. He's bruised  _him_  before.

Derek has brought  _his_  blood to the surface to discolor the skin. Stiles is human and always bruises and bleeds. Derek wants it to only happen for him. Because of him.

Because he'd do it rarely at all.

xi.

Scott is a good werewolf for not having been born into it. He notices things worth noticing, but doesn't notice what he should.

Scott doesn't notice Derek is behind them until Stiles swings his bat into Derek's stomach in surprise, but Scott notices the manila colored bindings wrapped around Derek's ribs a week later and asks, "Why aren't you healing?"

xii.

Chris Argent finds Derek and asks, "My daughter? Is she Scott's?" Argent doesn't say the word. But it is still apt so Derek shrugs.

So what? What would it change for the Argents? 

Nothing.

xiii.

His ribs take four weeks to stop feeling tender and sore. Every night he touches them, a little awed at the pain. So this is what it feels like to be hurt, to be human.

Derek finds he likes it. Can see why some humans hurt themselves deliberately by marking their skin with scars, holes and tattoos.

xiv.

Derek has lived a lot and seen a lot more.

There was Kate, but there was a space of time before and after Kate filled with monsters armed with fangs and hate. Not all of the not human.

Derek knows how to adapt to things that hurt.

Except for this. Doesn't want to.

xv.

The pain turns into a comfort.

Erica leaves Derek and by leaving Derek, leaves Boyd too. Stiles may not always like Derek, or wish him well, but Derek has proof of what they are. Boyd has none. Not with  _her_  gone.

xvi.

Boyd and Isaac share a room with Derek.

There's three bedrooms in the rental he found with his pack specifically in mind.

He doesn't wonder why because Derek can feel Peter's fleet footed madness, slinking in and out like the tide permeate through the empty bedroom that separates Derek's room from Peter's.

Boyd sleeps next to Isaac on a mattress on the floor. He hugs the boy tightly in his sleep, sniffing into Isaac's curls until they smell slightly salty. Isaac sleeps with claws digging into Derek's mattress. The stuffing peeking besides Isaac's fingers.

Derek keeps his bed between the boys and the door, facing it.

Just in case.

xvii.

Erica left to chase after freedom. Derek's already told her there's no such thing. But only Boyd trusts him enough to stay.

"She'll be back." Boyd says softly but no less strong.

"How can you be sure?" Isaac asks softly.

"No on escapes Beacon Hills." Derek answers. He wishes he was bitter about it, but he's accepted it as fact months ago. "Everyone always comes back."

xviii.

Scott hurts Stiles on a Tuesday morning and  _he_  asks Derek to train him Tuesday afternoon.

Derek isn't really listening to why Stiles says Scott did it or why it makes it okay if it was Allison related. He's staring at the lines of claws that are peeking at the top if his tee shirt, jealous someone not Derek marked him.

If Stiles were a werewolf...but  _he's_  not.

Derek nods slowly at the end of a ten minute explosion of words on why it's a good idea if Derek teaches Stiles defense against werewolves.

xix.

Boyd notices next. Derek isn't gentle by nature. Not anymore.

But Boyd sees the care Derek affords Stiles that Isaac and Peter brush off as Derek minding the boy's human fragility.

"You could do him real damage." Boyd says. " _He_  could do you some real damage."

"Yeah." Derek says.

Boyd says nothing else. Derek thinks though that they are both thinking of the scar running up Boyd's side that the blonde werewolf left.

xx.

Stiles is early one day, citing boredom and Scott being at work and his homework is done and a bunch of stuff that sounds like an excuse to be there.

Derek shrugs. "I run now."

So they run together. One afternoon turning into seven afternoons a week.

xxi.

Months go by before Stiles figures it out. Only Derek knows completely what is happening. The rest only have tiny shards of the large broken plate while Derek knew what the plate looked like before it broke. Boyd was closest though. He was slowly super gluing it together, but the others weren't even aware there was a plate to be glued back together.

"What the hell man? What's wrong with your shoulder?" Stiles demands.

But now Stiles does too and Derek is sure it is only a matter of time before the plate is neatly put back together and everyone is given a duplicate one for their own personal use. Stiles was a sharer of information like that. 

There is a purple starburst from where Stiles got the hold right. Derek spent the night, pressing it and swiveling his arm in the socket.

Humans are stronger than they appear if they have to bare this daily wear every day of their lives. Derek hesitates to answer before settling on an answer. "You." Derek shrugs like it is no consequence. "You got the hold right last night."

"Oh," Stiles frowns. "Why haven't you healed yet?"

Derek shrugs again, trying to think of an answer when Stiles sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You don't know, huh? You never know." Derek twitches in place, wanting to shrug again, but it hurts his shoulder.

He goes with the out.

xxii.

Stiles comes by two weeks later, early in the morning, when the boys are blearily getting ready for school as Derek keeps an eye on Peter.

He comes like a whirlwind of noise and hands that stops everyday routine. The boys watch in fascination, toothpaste trailing down Isaac's chin and Boyd's face lathered in shaving cream, razor in hand. Even Peter has stopped his eerie staring at everyone like he doesn't recognize any of them to gaze curiously at the spastic human in their territory.

"You lying liar who lies! False teller! You so totally knew!"

Feeling stupid and brave, Derek smirks and shrugs.

Stiles screeches.

xxiii.

When Isaac tentatively asks Stiles if he's going to school, Boyd hovering at his shoulder, the boy glowers and flops on the sofa Isaac found for twenty dollars and dragged home.

"No?" Isaac asks and nods when Stiles crosses his arms over his chest. "No."

Derek worries for his car's safety, but still gives Boyd the Camaro's keys.

xxiv.

Stiles twitches a lot, his mouth opening and closing. His legs bouncing and stilling. His fingers tapping and picking at his clothes.

"What. Just what. Like seriously? What." Stiles, it seems, is just at a loss how to have this conversation as Derek is.

"What." Derek agrees because this conversation was why he hadn't said anything for a year.

xxv.

The conversation is had.

It occurs in one day, a sum of 600 hundred words spoken in five hours because it is difficult, but Stiles is stubborn and prevails. Derek wishes the boy had less heart and this conversation could wait some more.

Stiles uses the words "okay" twenty times and "just" twenty-three times and says "You could have told me" five times.

Derek uses the words "young" ten times, "no" eighteen times and "choice" sixteen times and says "I don't know" eight times and "I didn't think it'd change anything" twice.

The conversation disintegrates.

"Stupid" is said fifty times. "Asshole" ten times. "You don't get to make my decisions for me!" Twice. "Shut up" thirty-one times.

The tally is reaching 495 words when they refuse to say anything else for an angry hour.

But by the end of the five hours "I trust you" was said exactly twice.

600 words.

xxvi.

"Don't hold back." Derek says irritated. "No one will hold back for you."

Stiles bites his lip and Derek can smell the second Stiles decides to speak. "But I can hurt you!"

Derek snorts. "You can try."

He's only gotten bruises from Stiles. Never anything more. Even his shoulder had only been badly bruised. Stiles lacks the killer drive that makes Scott and Jackson annoying.

If he could, Derek is sure, Stiles would wrap everyone in downy soft blankets and play Xbox all day long, only interrupted by Disney movies about love, family and friendship. Derek doesn't doubt Stiles could or would severely hurt -- _kill --_  someone if he needed to. It just wasn't in Stiles' nature to want to hurt.

And sometimes that made all the difference.

"You break my wrist, I'll let you train with Isaac or Boyd."

xxvii.

Werewolves have developed their own tactics for blending in with the humans they live among.

One method hunters use to find them is looking for the family with no history of broken bones, scars, bruises or deaths from illness.

A wife and husband set come to Beacon Hills and leave in matter of days. They come to his doorstep, wolfsbane in her hair, the oil on his hands but turn away when they see Derek's discolored skin at his wrist. The bruise around his eye.

"Sorry sir, we mistook you for someone else."

xxviii.

"You are so weird." Stiles shakes his head when he catches Derek tapping the fading bruises on his wrist like he expects to hear heart beats from them. "Most people don't keep touching what hurts."

Derek lacks the ability to say,  _but I've never been hurt before, not lasting, not by you and I want you to because you might disappear_  in a way that doesn't seem like a cry for help or reveal too much. Their relationship is slowly changing, becoming more defined. Derek doesn't want trap Stiles and Stiles doesn't want to be stuck with an angry stranger for life.

It's when Derek glances into brown eyes that he understands that he doesn't have to put it into words because Stiles already knows. It changes from there, everything.

Strangers no longer.

xxix.

Stiles is intelligent and he has college and university brochures for everywhere on his desk, obvious and plain. He looks expectantly at Derek when Derek comes by to listen to Stiles, to relax to the sounds he makes, although neither of them says anything.

It doesn't matter where Stiles goes or doesn't go, Derek will always be there.

It isn't until Stiles is a line of tension days later, Derek thinks maybe he should have said something.

"Stupid." Derek scoffs fondly, Stiles' forehead against his collarbone.

xxx.

Stiles doesn't date. Has seemingly ceased to have a sex drive. Derek has said something, even when it hurt to say, even when it made him furious. But he only brings it up once and when Stiles nods and says, "I know" and "Okay" he goes back to being relieved when Stiles continues to see no one.

xxxi.

It is a day in April, marked by cake and ice cream, Stiles says, "I don't want anyone else."

Derek can taste chocolate on his tongue from the kiss when he makes one last attempt at doing the right thing, "I don't care about anyone else before me, but no one else after me." It's a promise, a threat, a plea to be sure.

"Okay," Stiles says, his brown eyes blinking their understanding, the depth of what they were falling into. "No one else."

xxxii.

There's a red mark, bursted capillaries on Derek's neck that rarely fades.

The pain is faint and constant and loved.

 

 

 


End file.
